Related papers: The SPHERE view of multiple star formation
The last two decades have seen remarkable progress in our long-standing goal of determining the abundance and diversity of worlds in the Galaxy. Understanding of this subject involves tracing the path of interstellar material from dense…
The closest examples of high-mass star birth occurs in deeply embedded environments at kiloparsec distances. Although much progress has been made, an observationally validated picture of the dominant processes which allows the central…
The VLT-FLAMES Survey of Massive Stars was an ESO Large Programme to understand rotational mixing and stellar mass-loss in different metallicity environments, in order to better constrain massive star evolution. We gathered high-quality…
Massive stars like company. However, low-mass companions have remained extremely difficult to detect at angular separations ($\rho$) smaller than 1" (~1000-3000 au considering typical distance to nearby massive stars) given the large…
Determining the initial stellar multiplicity is a challenging problem since protostars are faint and deeply embedded at early times; once formed, multiple protostellar systems may significantly dynamically evolve before they are optically…
It is now clear that central star binarity plays a key role in the formation and evolution of planetary nebulae, with a significant fraction playing host to close-binary central stars which have survived one or more common envelope…
We show observations obtained with the integral field spectrometer OASIS for the central regions of a sample of barred galaxies. The high spatial resolution of the instrument allows to distinguish various structures within these regions as…
This white paper is motivated by open questions in star formation, which can be uniquely addressed by high resolution X-ray imaging and require an X-ray observatory with large collecting area along good spectral resolution. A complete…
We present a prospective work undertaken on Spectro-Polarimetric INterferometry (SPIN). Our theoretical studies suggest that SPIN is a powerful tool for studying the mass loss from early type stars. Based on Monte Carlo simulations, we…
Stars are commonly formed in binary systems, which provide a natural laboratory for studying planet formation in extreme conditions. In our first paper (Paper I) of a series Xie et al. (2011), we have shown that the intermediate stage -…
It is surprising to find dust around B type stars, as in the case of B[e] stars. These stars exhibit a dense, dusty environment witnessed by their infrared-excess and many emission lines from permitted and forbidden transitions. Given the…
Observational advances over the last decade have enabled high-resolution, interferometric studies of forming multiple systems, statistical surveys of multiplicity in star-forming regions, and new insights into disk evolution and planetary…
We describe the Zurich Imaging Polarimeter (ZIMPOL), the visual focal plane subsystem of the SPHERE "VLT planet finder", which pushes the limits of current AO systems to shorter wavelengths, higher spatial resolution, and much improved…
Roughly half of Solar-type planet hosts have stellar companions, so understanding how these binary companions affect the formation and evolution of planets is an important component to understanding planetary systems overall. Measuring the…
Stars and planets can be seen as the second fundamental building blocks of baryons in the universe (only second to the dust and gas in molecular clouds). Their formation involves dust grain growth of many orders of magnitude and a myriad of…
The field of planet formation is in an exciting era, where recent observations of disks around low- to intermediate-mass stars made with state of the art interferometers and high-contrast optical and IR facilities have revealed a diversity…
Starshades are a leading technology to enable the direct detection and spectroscopic characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. In an effort to advance starshade technology through system level demonstrations, the McMath-Pierce Solar…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
Evolved stars dominate galactic spectra, enrich the galactic medium, expand to change their planetary systems, eject winds of a complex nature, produce spectacular nebulae and illuminate them, and transfer material between binary…
The simple physics of microlensing provides a well-understood tool with which to probe the atmospheres of distant stars in the Galaxy and Local Group with high magnification and resolution. Recent results in measuring stellar surface…